Yamauba（yah-mah-OO-bah）

To explain Mother of Kintaro in detail:

Deep in the Ashigara Mountains, in a secluded hollow along bamboo ridgelines untrodden by humans, dwells a lineage of yama-uba known as the Yae-giri Mother Form. Bathed at birth in dew gathered on layered paulownia leaves and nourished by the breath of the mountains, this line is said to conceive children through union in dreams with an akairyū—an “red dragon” that appears on nights when crimson vapors gather. They rarely mingle with the human world, opening paths for those who keep the mountain’s order and baring fangs at those who trample its law. The Ashigara Yae-giri Mother Form takes as her charge the raising of children, favoring those with especially strong vital spirit. With few words she teaches how to split firewood, read the presence of beasts, ford streams, follow the courses of stars, and use the virtues of roots, leaves, and bark. When a child stumbles on a stone she watches and smiles, and when blood is drawn she silently applies moss juice. It is not pampering but passing on the mountain’s severity as it is. The crimson vapor seen in the Konjaku Monogatari is her warding veil, a barrier that blinds the eyes of outside gods. When Yorimitsu ascended from Kazusa, he recognized that vapor and sent Watanabe no Tsuna, an act born of the ancients’ intuition about this Mother Form’s power. In a thatched hut lived an old woman and a youth not yet twenty. The old woman called herself a demon-woman and felt no shame for her bond with the dream-red dragon, saying only that the child was born according to the mountain’s law. The boy she raised was later named Sakata Kintoki and became famed, yet once a child enters the world the Yae-giri Mother Form releases attachment and fades like mountain mist, caring nothing for wealth or honor, wishing only that the mountain’s balance remain unbroken. In Edo times, when the Kimpira jōruri was popular, she was portrayed as an ogress, but in old tales of Ashigara, oni signifies awe-inspiring power and is not confined to evil. Stories of bearing a thunder child and of a red dragon entrusting a child to the paulownia atop Mount Kintoki show this lineage’s dual nature of receiving from heaven and nurturing on earth. When sharing the mountain’s bounty she wears the face of an old mother, against ravagers she takes the aspect of a peak-dwelling oni. At midnight, when crimson vapor drapes the ridge, she consults the stars over a child’s fate and, if needed, commands beasts and trees to open the way. She leaves no treasure, only marks carved in wood grain and the remembered weight of a hand-axe in a child’s palm. Even now, on mist-laden mornings deep beyond the Ashigara Pass, she is said to listen for the breath of those who are meant to be raised, hidden within the rustle of bamboo wrens.